Walk the Moon w/ Milky Chance and COIN
Marymoor Park, Redmond, WA
08.10.15
Four years ago Walk The Moon was playing to only a handful of people at Seattle’s Tractor Tavern and today they are selling out amphitheaters. Dominated by youngsters with face paint, the crowd was deep and ready to dance. For a Monday night, the sold out Marymoor Park was alive and kicking, and WTM came out prepared to party. They opened the show to “The Circle Of Life” from Disney’s The Lion King before lead vocalist Nicholas Petricca broke the band into “Jenny” from their major label self-titled debut.
Clad in their typically colorful garb, these four charming guys worked their way through their deliciously pop-centric hits with wild abandon. Having succeeded in creating a sophomore album Talking Is Hard, that prevails in being even bigger and more danceable than their debut, WTM brought all of their soaring soundscapes to the live show. The clever lyrics, the triumphant vocals, the layers and layers of synths – it’s all there and set to an incredible light show.
At one point Petricca asked the crowd to “Take all your stress and negative feels and push it out by rocking out to this next song. That’s what were all about.” And that’s exactly what the crowd did. A sea of waving arms, thousands of people singing along, WTM have truly gone from indie-pop to sensational in just a few short years. And at the end, the crowd erupted to their latest major hit “Shut Up And Dance,” the song everyone had been waiting for, marking another successful night at the park.
Contrasting the elementary pop of Walk The Moon was the German electro-folk duo Milky Chance. At once low-octane groove and thrumming, gorgeous pop, this is a band that seems an unlikely suspect for topping the U.S. charts, but their unique hybrid has propelled them along, mostly on the power of “Stolen Dance” and its rhythmic dexterity. So what if half the time vocalist Clemens Rehbein’s lyrics are unintelligibly throaty and gloriously ESL? They still wrap themselves around beautiful harmonies and seductive production from Philipp Dausch. Though they seemed a bit of an odd pairing with the dance-pop lineup of the night, Milky Chance somehow worked.
Opening up the night, though, was Nashville quartet COIN who’ve just released their debut self-titled album. Their brand of 90’s-child party-pop boasts rocking instrumentation and emotionally on-point lyrics and frankly, they’re a great live band who started the night off right for a rollicking crowd.
Review by Stephanie Dore
Photos by Logan Westom
Walk the Moon
